Schrodinger's Gun
by Hiyume
Summary: Just another job, I told myself. It's just another job... but I was wrong. So terribly wrong.


**A/N:** A little something I wrote for my Writer's class, so I tried to make it a bit original (Though it reminds me of a certain popular TF2 fancomic. WHOOPS).

Hope you enjoy~

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Team Fortress 2. It belongs to Valve.

It was August 2nd, 1962 when I traversed into the warm summer night, our... _fort_ of sorts behind me. Remembering the date was pointless here, but I found that it was my only true source of humanity. The only thing that made sense.

I'd been out of work for a while-the government didn't seem to need me, and it was hard to find a job as a spy in public-when I recieved a letter from this... company. BLU, or 'Builders League Unite,' had offered me a longe-term job. They said they'd looked over my files and were impressed with my skills, and how those skills would be an excellent resource for their cause. They didn't say what cause. They didn't even tell me what I would be doing; from whom they wanted information; where I'd be going. All the letter told me was that I would be serving on a six-month contract, and that if I took the job I would be picked up and brought to... _somewhere._ It all sounded too ridiculous. Too suspicious... but I was desperate and broke.

I took the job.

A week after I replied to the letter, I was taken from my home in Lyon, France, _blindfolded_, to the destination. They only took the blindfold away once I was in whatever room I'd call home for the next six months. They threw away my briefcase-mostly filled with clothes and the items I used whenever I was on the job-and gave me a new one. This one had three sets of the same uniform-a dark pinstriped blue suit and a balclava of the same colour-and the new tools I'd be using. Thankfully there was also toiletries and a calendar with the current day already marked off.

The next day I realized I was not alone here. There were eight others, but they were not spies like myself. When I tried to introduce myself as Jacques, they wouldn't take any of it. They referred to me only as 'The Spy.' The same went with the others, according to their Class. There was the Engineer, the Demoman, the Heavy Weapons Expert or the 'Heavy' for short, the Sniper, the Soldier, the Pyro, and the Medic.

The only one to introduce himself by his actually name was Neil, the Scout. He was a boy just barely out of his teen years from Boston, Massachusetts. He was a little bit annoying, to be honest-energetic and talkative-but he was the only one that really seemed to understand my predicament.

He told me what I was here for. Yes, to collect information, but not through eavesdropping or betrayal. It was through fighting and collecting a briefcase from the enemy's fort.

This was war.

The whole team found it comedic really, the way this war was set. BLU, I learned, was not just some unknown company, but an organization that controlled about half of every establishment in the world. They were a secret of course, so no one knew that this organization was literally taking over the world.

But they had a rival. RED, or 'Reliable Excavation Demolition.' They owned the other half of the companies. This was who we would be fighting. Why was it so funny? Because our uniform was blue, and theirs was identical to ours but red. Our bases were not miles apart, but merely fifty feet from each other, the only thing separating us from them being a bridge spanning over a water way. The bases were identical. They had the same Classes. The same weapons. The same everything. It was like two toddlers fighting over nothing.

The tools were quite interesting as well. The Engineer was able to build a sentry gun that shot at anything that moved-well, if it was the same shade of red as the enemy's uniform. He also built teleporters. You stood on one, and it brought you to the matching exit. The Medic had something called a 'medigun,' that, when triggered, healed an ally. Not just minor wounds, but full on gashes and bullet holes and even missing limbs. It did this in a matter of seconds. The Medic tried to play it off by saying that it dramatically increased the body's ability to restore itself, but I knew even he wasn't exactly sure. No body could restore a missing limb on its own, enhanced restoration or not.

My own tools were strange. A watch that made me completely invisible for the duration of five minutes, then had to recharge for ten. A disguise kit-that itself was disguised as a cigarette pack-that let me take on the image of anyone on the opposing team. I would gain their voice, their demeanor, their physical attributes; a hologram beyond holograms.

These tools were unheard of outside this place, and the battle was just... _ridiculous._

We had a team meeting of sorts on the 31st of July, and two days later, I was sent out during ceasefire. We hoped maybe that the other team would have answers, that maybe we would find clues in their base for why this pointless war was even happening. Of course, being the Spy, I was most likely to even manage to get inside the base.

I crossed the bridge, cloaked, and for a moment I wondered if I was actually cloaked because I could still feel the wind ruffling my suit. But then a saw the RED Scout on the other side of the bridge, looking straight at me, yet then moving on as if he'd seen nothing.

His name was Quinn. Neil had told me about him-a school buddy of his a while ago. They'd been on the same baseball team, and after graduating they'd kept contact with each other. Then, for some reason, they'd both been sent letters to join this place. It was only after being sent here that Neil realized they were enemies, not allies.

He'd pleaded with me before I left to investigate not to kill Quinn if I saw him. I told him I'd try not to. I intended not to kill anyone. Being a spy meant you didn't want a criminal record, and I wasn't even sure if this would be going onto my record or not. Better safe than sorry, really.

Quinn was grumbling to himself, bouncing a baseball against the RED base's wall. I couldn't tell if he was annoyed because he was on guard duty or if something had happened earlier to make him frustrated. Either way, he was distracted-a convenient circumstance. I snuck up behind him, uncloaking quickly and tapping him on the shoulder. He turned, surprised, the ball bouncing away completely forgotten. Before he could so much as yell, I punched him hard across the face. He lost his balance and fell. His head hit the ground hard enough to render him unconscious.

Perfect. He was hurt, but not dead. I pulled out my disguise kit, opening it and pressing the small red button in the corner. I went blind for a moment, but before I could panic I could see again. I looked at my hand.

I no longer had my uniform gloves on. Instead my hand was bare, the palm and wrist covered in the same white bandage that Scouts wore. Looking down at the rest of myself, I confirmed that I was now no longer Jacques. I was Quinn.

Feeling just a little unlike myself, I went up the short ramp and past through the doorway into the fort. The interior was even the same as the BLU fort, so navigation wasn't a problem. I knew that the stairway to the second floor was to my right and through an archway, so I headed that way. When I got there, though, I wasn't alone.

I ran into the RED Engineer, who was heading down the stairway. He frowned slightly at me, and I could tell he was surprised, despite the goggles and construction helmet obscuring his eyes.

"O-Oh, hardhat." My mouth seemed to move on its own, and I tried to keep the confusion of losing my French accent and gaining a Bostonian one off my face. "What's up?"

"Don't play dumb, boy," the Engineer scolded in a southern drawl, "the meeting. Shouldn't you be heading down there yourself?"

"Uh, yeah." I turned around awkwardly and started heading down the stairs, taking the next set that led into the basement. I could feel the Texan's eyes on the back of my neck the whole time.

When we entered the meeting room, the rest of the RED team was already there. They looked impatient, and judging by how they stared at me, it was because of Quinn.

"Now," the RED Sniper spoke up, grabbing everyone's attention with his obvious Australian accent, "let's get started, shall we?"

As they spoke, I realized that this wasn't a meeting to plan an attack or organize defenses. This was the same discussion that we'd had just a few days ago. About the strangeness of this battle. How some of them had been here longer than their contract had stated. How they seemed to be fighting for nothing. How no theory they came up with made sense. I listened, staying quiet. That was, until they started asking what we should do about the problem.

"What do you think, Scout?" the Soldier asked suddenly. I sputtered for a second at the attention, everyone's eyes once again on me, waiting in anticipation. I realized then that I had a chance. A chance to see how willing they were to stop the fighting and get out of here.

"Erm... what if we... ya know... joined the BLU team, or something?"

There was silence for what seemed like eternity, and the longer that silence stretched, the faster my heart pumped. But then they all started to laugh as if they'd heard the funniest thing in the world. The Demoman came up beside me, wiping a tear away from his right-only functioning-eye.

"Funny, lad!" he exclaimed, and I could tell by the slur in his Scottish tone that he was slightly drunk. He slapped me on the back. "For a second, we thought you were serio..."

My disguise was broken. I didn't realize that physical contact was a problem, so I'd been careless. But that simple touch broke through the disguise and in less than a moment, I phased back into my regular, BLU Spy self. Before anyone could even flinch, a voice resounded through the fort.

"_Alert! BLU Spy is in the base!"_

It was the Anouncer-the same woman who anounced things in our base. That was enough to confirm it. RED and BLU were not enemies, or, at least, this wasn't a real war. It was all fake. It was all a game.

Then they were yelling, reaching for guns in their pockets that they slowly realized they didn't have. Careless. So I ran out of the room and down the hall, heart racing so fast and hard that their yells were muted. I could feel the ground shaking as they ran after me, their fingers just barely a hairbreadth from grabbing my suit. In that moment I was glad I'd taken out their Scout. Scouts were notorious for their running ability. I wouldn't have even gotten out of the room if he was there.

But my hopes were dashed when I reached the stairs. Standing at the bottom was the Engineer, a wrench in his hand, a large scowl on his face. I couldn't even remember when he'd left the room, but it was obvious he'd suspected me from the beginning. I tried to speak. I tried to run. I tried to do _something_. But it didn't happen, because the wrench connected with my face before my brain had a chance to process whatever it was I was going to do.

Everything went black.

**A/N:** I know it ends on a cliffhanger, but I most likely won't be continuing this. Even if I do it will be a LONG while (Like, once I finish four other fics I'm working on), and I'll probably end up rewriting this chapter anyway. I had to summarize a lot of things since I had a maximum word limit, so I'm not too happy with some things.

Anyway, thank you for reading!


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